There is much controversy today over whether or not Israel has a right to her land..Truly there was a time when a war between peoples constituted who got the land..we have only to remember Alexander the Great or the Napoleonic wars, or in more recent times the British Empire and yes, even the US when our ancestors settled here, the Indian was consigned to reservations.

Many Jews settled in the land called Israel in the early 1900’s. Some tried to farm the land and it was not too cooperative. Some Arabs were there too. The land was hard and difficult..It was a desert. Soon (you can read the history below) they became a Jewish Nation once again. War immediately broke out and the Israelis won. The Culture for what we now call the Palestinians was to walk away from a conquering army. They were not welcomed nor wanted by Egypt or other arab countries from which they had left to settle in Israel.They were going to be used by those nations as a cause..It would not be good for them to get too comfortable somewhere else..Of course remember, that some did not walk away as was the custom..They stayed and took part in the democratic process eventually. The land that was a desert became green…democracy and the economy flourished. Peaceful muslims took part, won elections. Please read below and the history.links further down.

I just returned from a speaking engagement at Tel Aviv University (pictures from the trip are on my website). My honorarium was four days of sight-seeing in Tel Aviv, Abu Gosh, Jerusalem, En Gediand Masada, and a series of meetings withwriters, policy analysts, academics and writers. I came back with one overriding conclusion, which stands for me stronger than it did before my trip: Israel stands at the front-line of the war between civilization and barbarism.As Eric Hofferwrote over forty years ago, “as it goes withIsrael, so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us all.” (“Israel’s Peculiar Position,” LA Times 5/26/68)

Israel is America’s best friend in the world today. It is Western in every fundamental respect: Its secular government has prevented both civil war and tyranny since its founding; its citizens’ rights are largely protected; its press is free and open; its court system is independent of executive fiat; and its economy is vibrant. It has its share of lunatics, but they have not taken over the culture. It is “middle-eastern” only in location.

While driving through Israel, one cannot help but remember that the area can become a military front at any moment. A sign in the road points left to Ramallah, home of Yasir Arafat—you can drive there (we did not), but an Israeli soldier will soon stop you to warn that the army cannot protect you if you go further. Straight ahead is the road to Jerusalem, which is just a few miles away. It’s all so close.

In less than half hour’s drive, the seacoast climate of Tel Aviv changes to the desert climate of Jordan. Bedouin camps—temporary structures, some with camels in front—squat between towns with high-tech industry. Jerusalem itself is deeply permeated with religious fanaticism of all kinds, and with neighborhoods defined by ethnic identities. The line that divided Israeli tanks from those of Arabs during the numerous attacks on Israel is a street—you can walk down it.
On the highway—a modern road built by the Israelis—I see towns surrounded by trees. The trees were nearly all planted by the Israelis. This is something little known in the U.S.: The Israelis have planted tens of millions of trees in a desert that had never before been planted, and they remain committed to plantingin the Negev Desert, especially near Beer Sheva. Trees did not exist here before 1948. The so-called “Green Line” originally dividing Israel from its neighbors is called such because it literally is a line of green.

At one point we come over a hill, and there are two towns ahead. The one on the left is an Israeli “settlement”—to use the popular phrase in the western press today—and on the right is an Arab town. To the left is a sea of trees among the buildings, and to the right, none. What the press and politicians in America call “illegal settlements” are Israeli towns, with factories, high-tech industries, and homes—built on hills where there was previously nothing but sand—bringing economic life and civilization to the desert.

There can be no basis for calling these towns “illegal” because, prior to Israel’s establishment of civilization in the area, no law and no government existed there (so-called “International Law” notwithstanding). It is also little known in the United States that when the Israelis announce their intent to withdraw from these areas, thousands of non-Israeli inhabitants—Muslims and Arabs—pick up and move to Israeli-controlled areas (Daniel Pipeshas recounted some of this). Life under Hamas ishell, life in Israel is good, and most locals know it.

As usual, Israel is blamed for the inability to make peace with a foe that is dedicated to destroying her. American Secretary of State CondoleezzaRice expresses a dominant view in the U.S. State Department when she rants against Israeli towns as an “impediment to peace.” Yet observe the Palestinian leadership’s response to Rice: “With the arrival of that black scorpion with a cobra’s head, Condoleezza, I began to worry that she would use her venomous fangs and hiss to kill this initiative and new spirit that we should protect” said Hamas Minister of Culture ‘Atallah Abu Al-Subh,in remarksaired on Al-Aqsa TV on June 15, 2008.

The deepest cause of the conflict between Israel and those purporting to lead the Palestinian people is philosophical: the deep inculcation of jihad into the minds of Palestinian youth, in the form of a violent ideology that has nothing to offer except the destruction of Israel and claims to paradise as a reward for death. Samples of this ideological material have been collected at the Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center; follow the link to “Captured Material.”

Until the motivations for jihad against Israel are admitted, confronted, and repudiated, the causes of war will remain in place, festering in the minds of each new generation of children. All else—the “settlements,” the check-points that prevent non-Israelis from freely partaking of the Israeli economy, the claims to economic devastation, the “historic connection” to a soil that the Palestinians never planted—is pretense.To see this, all one need ask is why Israel’s return to the 1967 borders would remove a cause of war, given that Israel was attacked when she held those borders. And, of course, for Israel to retreat to those borders now would leave foreign enemies a few miles from Tel Aviv. This would be national suicide for Israel, a new holiday for Hamas, and the end of civilization in the Middle East.

I join Aurora and many others in Congratulations to Israel on her 60th Birthday that she celebrated last month in May. Excellent links, I did not want to change a thing.

The Midnight Sun extends our warmest and most heartfelt congratulations to Israel on her 60th birthday. Your history has been a difficult one, but also one which has exemplified amazing courage and miraculous intervention which could only have been supernatural time and time again.

I highly recommend reading the amazing story of Israel below if you never have:

The Jews are not promoting brain washing the children in military
training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum
deaths of Jews and other non Muslims.

The Jews don’t hijack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics.

The Jews don’t traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for Jihad and
death to all the Infidels.

Perhaps the world’s Muslims should consider investing more in standard
education and less in blaming the Jews for all their problems.

Regardless of your feelings about the crisis between Israel and the
Palestinians and Arab neighbors, even if you believe there is more
culpability on Israel’s part, the following two sentences really say it
all:

If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more
violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no
more Israel.

GLENN: How about Barack Obama saying that he wants to meet with the leaders of Iran? What do you say? Jimmy Carter says let’s meet with Syria, that will be fantastic. Meanwhile Israel is preparing for war. Israel is doing these drills. Do we have Joel Rosenberg on the phone? He’s in Jerusalem. Hello, Joel.

ROSENBERG: Hello, Glenn, how are you doing? Three days away. Hang in there.

GLENN: Three days. Then I’m free at last, free at last. Joel, tell me about the drills that are happening right now in Israel and they say, you know, this is just ordinary run-of-the-mill stuff but you say it’s not, right?

ROSENBERG: No, this is very, very significant. The entire country of Israel is engaged in a five-day exercise, the largest emergency drill ever performed in this country, a country of 7 million people. 1.7 million schoolchildren today had a race in the bomb shelters practicing as one part of the nationwide effort to prepare for a massive avalanche of missiles coming down from Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas. We just met with the Israel welfare minister this morning, one of the senior advisors to primary Olmert to be briefed, a number of evangelical leaders we’ve got over here for an epicenter conference tomorrow. And he basically made the case that the existential threat to Israel is Iran. They have no doubt here in Israel that Iran is feverishly trying to build, buy or steal nuclear weapons. What they don’t understand is why Russia is helping them and why the United States and NATO seems to be asleep at the switch.

GLENN: Let me just switch gears with you here because I mean, you know, we’ve got Iran installing more centrifuges. You know, I’ve been talking about this for years that Iran is the head of the snake over there. This is just an evil, evil group of people that are preparing for the Mahdi which if you — I don’t think I’ve ever asked you this, Joel. If you look at the 12th Mahdi and the way these nut jobs over in Iraq interprets the Qur’an and everything else, this guy looks an awful lot like the antichrist, doesn’t he?

ROSENBERG: He does, but he’s not. The Bible describes antichrist with a capital A and a little A.

GLENN: Right.

ROSENBERG: Meaning there’s no question that what Ahmadinejad is in the spirit of the antichrist and what I mean by that is he wants to annihilate Judaeo-Christian civilization.

GLENN: I’m not talking about Ahmadinejad. I’m talking about the 12th Imam.

ROSENBERG: Oh, absolutely. There’s certainly that same feeling. Now, the Bible describes in Daniel 9 that the antichrist will come from Roman origins, from the people who destroyed Jerusalem in 70 A.D., but that being said this will certainly be a false Messiah of which Jesus described in Matthew 24, three times in one chapter describing what to watch for in the last days. Jesus said watch for false Messiahs and this will be one of them. Now, what I don’t know honestly, Glenn, is that is it possible that in the next few weeks or months or years someone is actually going to emerge that CNN and Fox and MSNBC and all these other networks will start to cover, Time will have them on the cover and could end up being the Mahdi of the year. I don’t know. You know, we don’t know what they’re talking about. What we know is that Ahmadinejad and his allies believe so passionately that this Mahdi, this Islamic Messiah is coming and what’s driving their foreign policy in Iran right now is their belief that they need to get ready for this Mahdi by annihilating two countries: Israel whom they call the little Satan, and the United States whom they call the great Satan. And anyone in Washington who doesn’t understand the theological drive that’s pushing Iranian foreign policy is at risk of being blindsided by an evil they may not see coming.

GLENN: Well, here’s the thing that most people don’t understand and I didn’t understand it for a long time, we’re the great Satan and little Satan, blah, blah, blah. What they mean by that is it is the same story line that Christians have. For the most part it’s basically the same story except Israel is the little A antichrist and we are the big A antichrist. They don’t — we look at it as a person. They look at it as a country or an overwhelming force, right?

ROSENBERG: They do. Now, there is in the Qur’an an actual character named the Gajal (ph) who becomes an actual sort of antichrist figure, an actual person. But you are absolutely right. Radical Islam is a mirror image and therefore a massive distortion of the Jewish and Christian scriptures but there’s a lot of similarities. It’s just completely opposite.

GLENN: Right.

ROSENBERG: They have a war of Gog and Magog, a Russian Iranian alliance that attacks Israel but they feel it wins.

GLENN: Wait, wait. I just want you to slow down on that.

ROSENBERG: Okay.

GLENN: Gog and Magog, anybody who is a Christian grew up hearing Gog and Magog and you don’t even know what it is. It is Iran and Russia aligning themselves. It’s already been done. It’s an amazing thing when you look at — well, let me ask you this because this is what you do for a living now, Joel. Would you say that most of the big things are either, have already been done or they are on the verge of being done? The players and the pieces are in place to be able to get you to the end time?

ROSENBERG: Absolutely. You know, there are a thousand prophecies in the Bible. More than 500 of them have already been fulfilled. The last almost 500 of them deal with specific events that happen in the last days. Now, I’m literally looking out of my window in a hotel looking at the Mount of Olives and the temple mount here in Jerusalem as I speak to you and on the Mount of Olives Jesus was asked by the disciples, hey, when are you coming back and what should we watch for, what are the signs of your return. Now, Jesus could have given a very Washington political answer, a Rumsfeld answer: No comment, next question. But he doesn’t. He answered the question. And when you look at that list and you look at events that are happening in this world today, it’s kind of eerie because you can check them off one by one and then when you expand that list to look at other references to, quote, the last days or the latter times in the Jewish and Christian scriptures, you start saying, my goodness.

For example, you just described this prophecy of the war of Gog and Magog which as you and I have talked about before is Russia and Iran. Now, what’s amazing about that is that Russia and Iran have never had an alliance with each other in the 2500 years since Ezekiel wrote the prophecy. Now, is that proof that the prophecy is going to be fulfilled in our lifetime, much less soon? No, you’ve got to be careful not to overreach. However —

GLENN: People have been saying this for thousands of years.

ROSENBERG: Yes. However, for 2,500 years this alliance, this political and military alliance in those two countries has never happened. It’s why heads are starting to turn. And when you add all the other things, the preparations that ultra orthodox Jews are making, for example, to building their Temple, this is kind of interesting.

GLENN: How much of that is done and in storage? I’ve heard that the Temple, everything that is needed is done and is in storage just waiting for the space.

ROSENBERG: Well, the architectural plans are finished, the outfits, the clothing that the priests will wear are finished. The implements that will be used for Temple sacrifice are largely finished. And two years ago — actually three years ago now, the summer of 2005 the Sanhedrin, the group of 71 rabbis that will govern the Temple was reconvened for the first time in 1600 years. So I call these strobe lights that you are coming in on a runway. We’re not entirely sure how far from touchdown that we are but when you look at the preparations being done in Iraq to rebuild the literal ancient city of Babylon, they’re underway.

I interviewed the Iraqi finance minister for my book “Epicenter.” He’s a senior Iraqi advisor to the prime minister and he described for me — it’s on the record in “Epicenter,” he described for me the plans they have to rebuild that city and the tremendous cultural center with Holiday Inn and an amusement park. It’s quite fascinating. Look, a lot of people say, you know, how do we even know that — I mean, people have been saying for thousands of years the end of the year, blah, blah, blah. I understand that. But I’m standing right now in the nation of Israel which did not exist for 2,000 years and the only document on the planet that says it will exist in the last days is the Bible, and 60 years ago this country was reborn. Jews started coming back to the Holy Land. The ancient ruins have been rebuilt. The deserts are blooming. We’ve taken hundreds of evangelical leaders over the last few days through this country to see that Israel is the super sign, the one that you say, okay. When the Bible says look for wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, famine, persecution of the believers in the last days, yes, that’s all happening but it’s always happened. What makes it different now is that Israel has been reborn as a country and that Russia and Iran are forming and alliance to annihilate her. It’s got — you know, these are what I’ve been writing these novels about, nonfiction book “Epicenter.” This new book, “Dead Heat” is the aftermath. But the point us even for a skeptic, even for a cynic you have to say, goodness gracious, there are some trend lines that don’t make sense outside of the prophecies of the Bible.

GLENN: I tell you, Joel, we want to continue our conversation in a couple of weeks if you don’t mind.

ROSENBERG: Sure, absolutely.

GLENN: You are coming back and I’d like to do a series with you on radio and television about the different things that you’re seeing and kind of spell it all out. I just finished your book last week, week before last.

ROSENBERG: “Dead Heat.”

GLENN: I mean, it’s just tremendous.

ROSENBERG: Thank you.

GLENN: I told you this last night on television it’s the first time I’ve ever heard anyone explain. The United States is not mentioned in the book of Revelation. Nowhere does it say the United States or refer to us or anything like that.

ROSENBERG: Right.

GLENN: And people have said, well, that’s just because we’re all going to be in — we’re such a perfect, kind, Jesus-loving nation that we’re all going to go up in the rapture. And I’m like, have you read the news lately? But your book, you take a different bet on it that we’re going to be vaporized, that several cities will be vaporized. I think — and you mention this in the book. You know, it could have been an economic vaporization or anything. I mean, there’s a million things that could take us down right now that would make us not able to participate in the, you know, in the destruction or the defense of Israel.

ROSENBERG: Well, that’s right. Now, I want to be clear with you on radio as I was on television last night which was the first line of this new novel, “Dead Heat” is I pray to God this one never comes true. The eerie way of the fictional elements seeming to come true and I don’t want people to think that the Bible predicts the United States is going to get hit with nuclear terrorism. I don’t. What I’m laying out is a fictional scenario that I think is potential consistent with the scriptures and which give people a chance to think through what might that look like and how might we be blindsided in the midst of a dead heat, in the midst of a campaign in which the country’s so focused on an election which the race is so tight and the country is so bitterly divided that we are just not looking when we get hit by something that we should have seen coming but we didn’t.

GLENN: It’s a frightening thing. Joel Rosenberg, the author of “Dead Heat.” Listen, if you read the “Left Behind” series, like the “Left Behind” series, this is left behind, I think, this is “Left Behind” for talk radio listeners. This is all of the real life things that are going on right now and you can look at them and go, oh, my gosh, and you can see it. It doesn’t start on an airplane with everybody disappearing. It takes you all the way through on the real life things that are going on. It’s a “Dead Heat,” Joel Rosenberg. Great book, sir, and stay safe in Israel, will you?

ROSENBERG: Enjoy your vacation and I look forward to seeing you when we get back.

I wanted to share with you some interesting tidbits from prophecy central in view of what is taking place now with Israel and our own Nation’s role.

There is a legendary story concerning an agitated Frederick the Great who, in frustration, demanded from his cabinet that somebody provide him with proof of the existence of God. There was a momentary silence before one of his counselors spoke up: “Have you considered the Jew, your Majesty?” he asked.The continuing existence of the Jew is proof positive of God’s existence, just as the existence of a Jewish state is proof positive that we are living in the last days of human government as foretold by the Bible prophets of antiquity.There are three distinct statements made within the Divine promise of blessing given to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.The first is that God will bless those who bless the Jews.

When the United States wrested its seat at the council of nations from England, it became the first nation on earth to grant full citizenship to Jews.

It was the first nation to allow the Jews an unrestricted vote. It was the first nation to recognize the incomparable blessing the Jewish people have been to humanity.

America’s second president, John Adams, said, “The Jews have done more to civilize men than any other Nation. They are the most glorious Nation that ever inhabited the earth. The Romans and their Empire were but a bauble in comparison to the Jews. They have given religion to three-quarters of the globe and have influenced the affairs of Mankind more, and more happily than any other Nation, ancient or modern.”

And no nation on the face of the planet today, or at any time in recorded history, has been more greatly blessed than the United States of America.

The second is that God promised that in the Jews “shall all families of the earth be blessed.”

Without the Jews, there would be no Bible. Jesus came to earth as a Jew. Without the Jewish Jesus, there would be no Christianity.

Apart from the theological argument, a quick look at the last hundred years or so proves the promise isn’t confined to religious blessings alone.

From 1901 to 2001, the world’s 6 billion people competed for the scarce 844 Nobel Prizes that have been awarded. Among those 6 billion people are nearly 2 billion Muslims – roughly 20 percent of the global population.

Of those 2 billion Muslims, eight have been singled out to receive the Nobel Prize – (seven if you consider that one of them was a politically motivated award mistakenly given unrepentant terrorist Yasser Arafat).

In any case, Muslims account for less than 1 percent of the total Nobel Prizes awarded in the last hundred years.

In the middle of the 20th century, the Nazis exterminated some 6 million Jews, more than half the world’s Jewish population. There are today about 14 million Jews left.

Even with half their number exterminated at the century’s midpoint, 159 of the remaining 836 Nobel Prizes were awarded to Jews, or roughly 18.8 percent of all the Nobel Prizes awarded in Nobel’s history.

(If you’re keeping track, that is about 20 times as many prizes divided among 14 million Jews than were shared by the 2 billion Muslims worldwide)

In America, the influence of American Jews is hugely disproportionate to their numbers. Conspiracists point darkly to the “Jewish influence” in education, banking, law, medicine, government, media and entertainment as evidence of a Jewish conspiracy to control the world.

They accurately point out that American Jewry accounts for less than 2 percent of America’s general population, but then draw their conclusions without the benefit of Scriptural discernment.

The “Jewish influence” in American life is part of God’s blessing on America – the “Jewish conspiracy” canard given them in reward is part of God’s curse on Israel.

“Then will I pluck them up by the roots out of My land which I have given them; and this house, which I have sanctified for My Name, will I cast out of my sight, and will make it to be a proverb and a byword among all nations” (2 Chronicles 7:20).

The curse was partially lifted, beginning in 1948, but will not be entirely lifted until the close of the Tribulation Period.

“And it shall come to pass, that as ye were a curse among the heathen, O house of Judah, and house of Israel; so will I save you, and ye shall be a blessing: fear not, but let your hands be strong” (Zechariah 8:13).

The Jews have returned to the Land, but they remain a “proverb and a byword among all nations” to this day.

Finally, God promised that He would “curse them that curse you.” The precision with which God kept this promise is nothing less than astonishing.

During the Crusades from 1095 to 1270, Jews in Southern Europe fled to Spain, England, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe as the result of severe persecution and wholesale massacres of the Jews.

England turned out to be the wrong place to go, because in 1290 King Edward I expelled the Jews. King Charles II did the same thing in 1394 by forcing all Jews from France. Interestingly, Spanish Jews found peace and security in Spain and Portugal while those countries were under Muslim rule.

At that point in history, Europe was fractured, ignorant and in constant turmoil, while that same period of time is known to history as the Golden Age of Islam.

The Moors were world-renowned for their knowledge of astronomy, medicine and science, and the Islamic world boasted the most extensive libraries that had ever existed to that time.

In the 1400s, the Moors were kicked out of Spain by the Papal forces of Europe. In 1492, on the same day Columbus set sail for the New World, Spain expelled any unconverted Jews who had survived the Spanish Inquisition. This time they fled back to England where the Protestant reformation now welcomed them.

Spain’s global empire lasted less than a century after it expelled its Jews, to be replaced by the Jew-friendly British Empire whose reach extended to every corner of the globe. In 1917, the British captured Palestine from the Muslims. The British Crown offered the Jews a homeland via the Balfour Declaration, and a year later, England won the First World War.

After the war, the British broke most of their promises to the Jews, restricted Jewish immigration to the Holy Land, and in the years since have increasingly turned their backs on the Jews that brought them such great blessings for more than 300 years.

The British Empire upon which “the sun never set” in 1900, had, by 1948, lost its last colony when Burma declared independence, and the British Empire was no more.

In 1933, Germany was among the most cultured and sophisticated nations in Europe. Old Berlin was Europe’s Crown Jewel. The Nazis turned on the Jews, together with most of Eastern Europe, and 12 years later, Europe’s Crown Jewel was a pile of burning rubble.

The Arab world, which had been so blessed during its Golden Age, collapsed into its present state of affairs, with most of it still operating as if electricity had never been harnessed.

The Arab Muslims supported Hitler, opposed Jewish immigration, waged repeated wars against Israel, deny Israel its rightful territory, and now mount a global jihad to finish Hitler’s goal of total extermination. The backward nature of modern Islamic culture and society are the fruits of those efforts.

Historically, wherever the Jews were welcomed, that nation flourished and prospered. Where the Jews were persecuted, those nations floundered.

It is more than just coincidence; it is an identifiable historical pattern that has continued, without deviation, since the days of the Babylonian captivity.

Babylon prospered when its Jews prospered, it fell to Persia when Neboplasser turned against them. Persia prospered until it turned on the Jews, whereupon it fell to Alexander’s Greece. And so on, throughout history, up to and including the impending collapse of the rabidly anti-Semitic United Nations.

God’s Word is true, and Bible prophecy is always 100 percent accurate. Jesus said that before He returned, ALL Bible prophecy would be fulfilled – to the tiniest “jot and tittle” – (the two most insignificant characters in the Hebrew alphabet).

In tracing Israel’s history from Babylon to the present, we see the incredible detail with which God keeps His Word. Although America continues to be Israel’s principle protector, and continues to enjoy the concomitant blessings that come with it, America’s good fortunes began to wane about the same time the White House forced Israel into the Oslo Agreement.

The “land for peace” formula called for Israel to give up some of the land of Promise in exchange for peace. In other words, it was a form of blackmail whose terms were drawn up in Washington and forced upon Israel for the express purpose of undoing what God had already done, including dividing Jerusalem and taking part of it from the Jews.

“And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it” (Zechariah 12:3).

People can certainly deny any biblical connection, but the hard reality marches on with the growing shadow now falling across global society. Now it is America’s turn to discover just how serious God was about the whole “blessing and cursing” thing.

And by the time circumstances force America to recognize the danger it faces, it will be too late to do anything to affect the outcome.

“So shall My Word be that goeth forth out of My Mouth: it shall not return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it ” (Isaiah 55:11).